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Dave Bautista’s new movie Final Score is set around the final match at West Ham’s Boleyn Ground, or Upton Park.

Filmed four months after West Ham’s last game in the ground before moving to the London Stadium, Final Score sees Bautista’s character, ex-soldier Michael Knox, using his military skills to take down terrorists who have hijacked a West Ham match against Dynamo.

However, despite the distinctly English backstory, Dave wasn’t exactly clued up on the intricacies of the Premier League.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk, the 49-year-old admitted he hadn’t a clue about anything West Ham United related before filming.

When we asked how much he knew about the London team, Dave said: ‘Absolutely nothing! Absolutely nothing at all. I didn’t grow up with football to begin with and I just didn’t know anything about the side. My first education in it was with the producer Mark Goldberg, who grew up in the stadium – which is where this whole idea stems from.

Final Score takes place against the background of the Boleyn Ground (Picture: Sky Cinema)

‘This is really paying tribute to the stadium that he loves so much, that he grew up with and has so many fond memories of. I think he started going there when he was five years old with his father. But other than that, I didn’t know anything about it at all.’

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The movie sees Knox take on a group of hardened criminals in the halls of the Boleyn Ground, performing insane stunts – including riding a motorcycle across beams and roofs, and swinging across Upton Park on a banner.

Yep, the blurbs calling Final Score ‘Die Hard in a football stadium’ are pretty accurate.

But Dave confesses that he had nothing to do with the most dangerous stunts in the movie.

Dave admits he was pretty terrified of Martyn (Picture: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage)

The Guardians Of The Galaxy star told us: ‘The most terrifying, I didn’t have anything to do with. I always leave the bigger stunts, the most dangerous stunts, for my stunt double Rob de Groot – he’s been with me for 12 films now. Stuff like the motorcycle scene – which was really done, it was all practical stuff – and hanging off the banner, flying down the stadium, that was my stunt double. So I can’t take credit for anything that was extremely dangerous.

‘I do a lot of my own fight scenes. I’m qualified to do those, I’m comfortable doing those. Some of the stuff with Martyn Ford was the most terrifying. At first, when you meet Martyn, you don’t really realise how big he is until you’re standing next to him. He’s just an enormous massive human being. And when you know this big man is swinging his tree trunk of an arm at you, and it’s coming full speed… he is an athlete, he has great control. But until you realise that, it’s quite terrifying.’

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And while being a former WWE champ certainly helps, Dave is keen to point out the difference between the ring and the set.

He said: ‘I guess [his wrestling past] helps a little bit, but I think my athleticism in general just kinda helps. Professional wrestling and fight choreography in films, they’re just really different.

‘A lot of the time you’re just playing for camera angles, whereas with professional wrestling, we do make a lot of contact – obviously some of it’s like contact because we don’t want to knock each other out, because we still have to entertain thousands of people. But it’s for a live audience, not so much for camera angles.’

Final Score is set for release in UK cinemas and on Sky Cinema on 7 September.

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